ACAP - Automated Content Access Protocol

Have you heard about the ACAP initiative ? Funded by the World Association of Newspaper, the international Publisher Association and the European Publisher Councils, this projects aims to create technical framework that enables content publishers to express permissions in a format that search engine can interpret. ACAP is currently a project that aims to :
(a) create the technical framework, re-using as much as possible existing mechanism (like robot.txt, robot metadata tags, ...)
(b) communicate to the industry and create awareness to use this protocol
(c) create a governance framework to manage the protocol in the future.

It's an interesting initiative to follow because it provides publishers a tool to expose more high value content in a managed way. So far, the major public search engine didn't show big enthusiasm to participate but I guess it's more a wait and see position than a pure rejection. Having in mind all the pending case they are facing, ACAP might bridge the gap of copyrighting interpretation between Publisher and search engine. The status details of the mid term conference are on the-acap.org. The next progress status are reported in December 2007.

Be connected all the time - Virginia Tech example

The Virginia Tech shooting is horrible and I don't understand how such situation can occurs nowadays. Politics is not the purpose of this blog, so I won't elaborate on the shooting facts but it triggers an new expectation : We'll need to be connected all the time !
- The University has sent e-mail to warn every student that a shooting was taking place.
-Instant Messenger was used to explain the modus operandi to student in the Norris Hall, IM was a workable alternative to the overloaded Mobile network (Verizon claims a 400% volume increase during the shooting)
- Video shooting from Phones is more and more used in press coverage, Vtech drama video are visible on YouTube, even If it has no added value in terms of information
- Websites have been created to provide assistance to Vtech student
- Journalists used Myspace, Facebook or community site to find their information

We are really in a connected world, Internet social community plays an active role, Vtech is a dramatic example.

Image credit : planetblacksburg.com

Copyrighting and Google News Services

I didn't elaborate on this before but you all have read elsewhere that a court in Belgium has upheld an earlier ruling against Google that prevents the search provider from copying newspaper headlines in its Google News service and search index. The case was introduced by Copiepress, an association of 18 Belgian newspapers. The sentence is confirmed but the penalties are reduced to 25.000€/day, which provide me material to estimate the revenue generated by Google on the Belgian market. In the US Google can refer to a fair usage to populate their service, in Belgium it will not be the case any more.

Google must remove all citations to newspaper article from his search index and from his cache because that can be subject to copyright. OK but.. By doing that, it's not only the search indexing that is sentenced, Any reference to cached content is considered : the formatted cached version but also the relevance ranking, Keyword in context, ... It's also funny to see that the publishers know the rules of the game. if you don't want to be indexed, fill in the robot.txt file. Have a look at one of the newspaper member of copiepress, le soir... lesoir.be/robot.txt is quite empty. Go to the homepage of this site and guess what tool they use for their statistic :-)

The beta syndrome - When does startup cross the chasm ?

Have you read Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the chasm ? To move from a technology driven to a customer driven model you have to cross the chasm of an early adopter community to a model where you address the "mass market". In short to move from R&D to a real product in operation.
For the web2.0 is often the time where thing goes wrong for Entrepreneurs and they tend to extend the happy days where they served geek without too much consideration of operational excellence, even if the product is already adopted and often top of mind. Google is a good example, did you notice that Gmail is still in beta ? I call it the beta syndrome of the web2.0, check in your own startup list and you'll notice how much are in beta mode... Why do I care ? Well the blog platform you are reading this post from just cross the chasm ! Congratulation Blogger...

Take over rumors in the business publishing world

It's funny to see how cyclic the rumors of take over bid are in the business publishing. In the industry, there is only 3 global players : Thomson, Reed Elsevier (mostly known for his brand Lexis-Nexis) and Wolters Kluwer (mostly known as CCH in the US market). Every 2 years there are rumors of either merge between 2 of the three or acquisition of one of them by the others. this time the market place was expecting Wolters Kluwer to acquire Reeds. Their Share event rose with 2% on the London stock exchange... In the mean time, EU regulation have already stated in 1998 that it would contradict competition rules and that merging those 2 dutch rivals in the same group, with the current set of activities was not possible. Now, WK put his education division for sales. You can apply for a price of 700m€...

Legal aspects of user generated content

Nobody cares !!!! Well, I need to look after legal aspect of user generated content. as publisher we earn our living from the content and intellectual property is one of our assets... I've attend a Juriconnexion.fr event where that kind of topic was addressed and the conclusions of professor Manara from the Edhec Business School can highlight some issues : If your site contain offending content about yourself, you are safe :-) but otherwise you can be responsible to civil law and more... Why ?
The "blogger" or the one that allows user generated content is responsible of the content of his site, the one that provides the content has also his part of responsibility but it's theoretical since you can post anonymous comment/content. Finally, in France, the one that host the site is safe.... That why you'll find a lot of explicit content on their blogging platform ! So, as Publisher, we just need to control that the content is meeting our editorial policy but can we make a commercial product out of it ? Yes if the licence and the Terms and Conditions to post content is explicit. Having said that, who is going to generate content knowing that the site is making money out of it ? Would you ?

Mashup in a B2B world ?

Mashup application are often reduced to an enhancement of Google Map with some nice (useless?) features. Recent announcements make me think that we'll see mashup in a business context sooner than expect. SalesForce.com strategy behind their AppExchange is a good example of Mashing up application together in their environment. Read the press release that announced the SalesForce for Google Adwords to understand the business impact of Mashups. Traditional Publishers are moving to the software world to enter the Client's Value chain. More and more propose work flow applications in their portfolio (Check Wolters Kluwer's Corporate and Financial Services) that need to take Mashup into account. In the same vein, Factiva announced a mashup outside the Google sphere (that's the news!). Factiva SalesWorks locates prospect on a map (oohhh again a map :-) but this time the Microsoft Virtual Earth. Thing are definitively evolving there !